Positive Emotions Generated from Pleasure Reading: Exploring the Perception of “Healing” for Female Boys’ Love Readers in Taiwan

This study explores how pleasure reading soothes readers in their daily lives. Pleasure reading is a non-goal oriented activity. Readers may not have possessed negative emotions when they are engaged in reading, and they do not necessarily read to cope with negativity. They read for enjoyment or for other positive emotion it may bring. Instead, healing reading is goal-directed; it aims to reduce readers’ negative emotions and helps the readers regain the peace of mind. Some female Boys’ Love (BL) readers claim that they are often “healed” and boosted by BL reading. This claim indicates commonality between pleasure reading and healing reading. However, few research has studied the healing effects of pleasure reading. As such, this study analyzes female BL reader’s perception of “healing” and explores the emotional healing efficacy generated from pleasure reading. Adopting a grounded theory approach, this study interviewed 22 female BL readers in Taiwan. The analysis showed that the “healing” perception of female BL readers can be differentiated into ten different sensations that are grouped into three main categories. The first category is the healing perceptions induced from the emotional expressions of a story; the sensation being sweetness, coziness, and happiness with pain. The second category is the healing perceptions induced from the textual features of a story; the sensations being relief, comfort, completion and satisfaction, amusement, and loveliness. The third category is the healing perceptions generated from the visual or auditory stimuli, encompassing the sensations of intoxication and warmth. There are four situations prompting the occurrence of “healing”. The first situation is that a story echoes a reader’s love experiences or her expectations for intimacy. The second situation is that a story echoes a reader’s life experiences beyond the intimate romantic relationships. The third is that a work fulfills a reader’s sensational preferences. The fourth situation is that a reader’s enjoyment is extended from reading a popular original work to reading BL derivative stories (fan-created stories based on a popular fiction). From the perspective of healing reading, this study also observed different patterns in the bibliotherapeutic processes of achieving at identification, catharsis, and insight. Identification effect occurred when readers empathize with the story characters’ personality, experiences, or perspectives. Catharsis effects included getting positive energy, relieving negative emotions, and facing the hurts from the past. Lastly, the insight generated from reading included a change of perspective toward the romantic relationship, self-adjustment in life, self-perception, and the reflection and new views about the society. The interviewees also claimed that the “healing” from BL reading is important in their daily lives. It calms them and helps boost the energy for facing the harsh of life, coping with the hurts from the past, learning life lessons vicariously from the fictional characters, and getting a sense of control of their lives. The findings show that BL reading does possess emotional healing efficacy toward certain BL readers. In addition, the experiences reported by the readers show that everyone lives an imperfect or dissatisfactory life in some aspects, and the self-healing via pleasure reading is an important way for the readers to cope with the stresses accumulated in daily lives. Future research may continue to explore the emotional experiences bring by different genres of texts so as to better understand the emotional healing efficacy of pleasure readings.